tesla man out of time by margaret cheney

The central “button” of material electrostatically propelled the surrounding gas molecules towards the glass globe. It was a small glass globe with a tiny piece of solid material mounted of the end of a wire serving as single-wire connection with the high frequency current source. For example, this is how a device called a carbon-button lamp is described: Readers’ eyes will glaze over if they are interested only in Tesla’s eccentric personality and they will only be left wanting if they are genuinely interested in the science. One downfall on the author’s part is her poor description of Tesla’s experiments and inventions.

He lived until 1943 and was pretty busy the whole time. He also built a system to transfer electrical power wirelessly. He discovered that super cooled gases behave differently, thereby creating the field of cryogenics. He also developed the first radio transmitter and later, the first remote controlled vehicle. Then he discovered that the night sky was full of radio signals coming from far away (making him one of the fathers of radio astronomy). First he was wowing crowds with his discovery of halogen light bulbs (decades before they caught on), and another curious kind of light, which was later discovered to be x-rays. This isn’t the authors fault Tesla was just making discoveries in every field. The problem in later chapters is that there is no cohesive story, but rather a series of more or less unrelated events. This first part of the book is definitely the most interesting. The next five chronicle his childhood and early career, his genius and neuroses, his early setbacks and his greatest achievement.

The first chapter is a vivid imagining of what it would have been like to visit Tesla’s laboratory at the height of his prominence. Unfortunately, this issue is only mentioned, and never fully explored. I chose to read this biography partially because I wanted to learn how someone so revolutionary could be forgotten so summarily. Google ngram showing number of book references for Edison and Tesla

Tesla man out of time by margaret cheney